The Evolution of Mobile Gaming

By Features Desk

Wednesday, February 21, 2018.

When mobile phones first hit the shelves, they were used solely for getting in contact with one another and also giving your arm a bit of a workout as you lugged the handset and battery around everywhere you went this was the era of the yuppies. Your Patrick Bateman-esque men and women who were all about fine suits, making money, and having the latest gadgets. 

But as technology evolved, these mobile phones became more and more of the norm. Soon, everybody had them, and they became more than a mere means to contact our friends and family. They had calendars, organisers, alarms, and games. The video game industry had been generating greater interest in those years, and so mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and Motorola wanted to get in on the action by including things to pass the time while waiting for the bus. 

Of course, this was just small games that took up mere megabytes like Snake or Solitaire, based on classic arcade or card games, and often, as the phone screens were at the time, these could only be played in black and white. However, as colour screens started to slowly infiltrate the market, the games were able to become more sophisticated, and the opportunity arose for larger, more ambitious games. 

And with the advent of the smartphone, what once seemed far too sci-fi to be a reality just yet did just that. App and game developers jumped on the chance to experiment with different gaming platforms for smartphones, and this was seen in the explosion of popularity found with the likes of Flappy Bird and all its imitators. 

Furthermore, developers have been creating games with all platforms, and even aspect of life, in mind. What started as an-almost entirely dissimilar version of certain popular games upon release due to lower specifications on our mobile and smartphones has lead to near identical copies that do the job on our smartphones without needing to lug around an Xbox or PlayStation.

Role-playing games, in particular, are perfect for the mobile gaming industry. While things such as Candy Crush and other puzzle-esque games that hark back to the mobile gaming heritage of old are still enormously popular, as the available RAM and storage space on our smartphones becomes ever larger, the possibilities of what we can and cannot do on these devices is broadening. 

As an example, you can now experience Final Fantasy 15 on your mobile phone. This is similar to games such as Injustice: Gods Amongst Us, which took the arcade nature of the full game and made it available on your Samsung, iPhone, or HTC. This is also evident with Oceanhorn, Tempest, Football Manager Touch, and all those other games frequently voted best of the year. 

While it is unlikely that the console will be replaced by the smartphone, especially when considering battery-life, graphics, and game speed, you only have to look at the recently released Nintendo Switch to see that perhaps portable console gaming is the future. We are already addicted to playing games to pass the time on our phones, so it is maybe just a matter of when, not if, we start carrying around a portable Xbox along with one of our most prized possessions.